* 1 gallon of water
* 1 pint of starter
* 1/2 pound or a 1/2 cup of sugar plus some more for
bottling
* 1/2 cup of malt flour
* 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
* A cup of water
* a sprig or spoonful of an herb or herbs of your
choice. (optional)

(see
Home Brewing Supplies below for sources for online ordering of home
brewing supplies)

Day 1
Mix
Ingredients *Grind
a
cereal grain
into
flour, or you can use already made flour. To make your own flour, put
grain into a blender and blend on high until it
is ground into a
flour. Malted barley is the preferred grain, white wheat flour is
the
least desirable. You could use such things as oatmeal, brown rice or
corn
flakes. I use a mixed blend of different flours that includes malt
flour. A store-bought flour that has the word "malt" in it would be
good. If you don't have any malt flour available, you can substitute
malt extract. Do not use
self-rising flour. *Put
1/2 cup
of
malt flour into 2
quarts of water in a non-metallic saucepan
and
bring to a boil, stirring continually with a wooden spoon, until the
flour thickens. . *Put
the cream
of tartar in another quart of cold water, stir and pour it into clean
plastic bottle(s). *Put
the sugar
in the fourth quart of water and boil it until it becomes a syrup[*]. I
use candy
sugar
syrup in all my ales.Substitute 200 mls of sugar syrup for the
half pound/half cup of sugar, if you use syrup. Also, you could
substitute corn
syrup or golden syrup. Let
cool to luke warm. *After
it has cooled to luke warm, mix all
these
together and add the starter.
*Pour
into
clean, plastic soda-pop bottle(s). Containers should
be tall and narrow
rather than short and wide. Leave 1/4 of the space empty at
top. *Put
airlocks
on the bottles.
This is a piece of plastic secured with a rubber band over the opening
of the bottle so that gas can escape but bugs cannot get in.

*Keep
in a
warm room temperature.

Day 2
Re-oxygenate *Re-oxygenate
between 14-24 hours after starting by getting more air in.
This can mean pouring the brew into another container and then pouring
it
back again, shaking or stirring the containers. This will slightly
improve flavor by encouraging the yeast to produce more diacetyl, a
buttery-tasting compound. If you miss this step it won't have any more
serious consequences.

Day 3
Add
gruit. * A "gruit" in this sense is basically an herbal tea. Boil 1 cup of
water and pour it over the herbs of one's
choice, cover and let set 20 minutes or until lukewarm. Filter the
leaves or whatever was used. An herbal tea bag is fine -- you may
as well experiment to find something you like. I use a stalk of
ground ivy, also known as "alehoof", which was a classic flavoring
added to ale before hops. It grows as a weed in many lawns.(You could also start making
your
gruit on Day 1 by mixing the water and plant material, cover and leave
with the fermenting liquid in the 90 degree (F) temp environment.)

Day 4 Secondary *Pour
or siphon into bottles which are tall and thin, leaving behind as much
of the sediment at
the bottom as possible.

Day
5 Bottle *Siphon
the
liquid
in the secondary bottles into clean plastic soda pop
bottles, leaving about an inch of head space in each bottle. Add 2
teaspoons of sugar
syrup to each pint (honey, golden syrup or corn syrup can be
used).
Secure each bottle with
a plastic cap. Give it a light squeeze to make sure no air is going in
or out.

Pour
a cup of warm water into the leftover
sediment.

Day 6
Wait

Start
another batch using a pint of the
leftover sediment and water from yesterday as a starter.

Day 7
When bottles are carbonated (feel inflexible when squeezed),
refrigerate for a few hours and drink.